Naked Vegan Cooking

This is just a quick blurb ahead of the recipe to advertise the Manchester’s “Reclaim the Night” march on the 21st of February 2013. For those of you who don’t know about Reclaim the Night, its a lively march to demonstrate for the right to walk the streets at night without fear of sexual violence, street harassment and assault. And really good fun. So if you are in or around Manchester, you should definitely come along! Check out the facebook event here, and watch the promotional video below:

Now, on with this wonderfully whimsical food. Green Eggs and Ham, inspired by the fabulous Dr Seuss, has neither eggs nor ham in it. Its a variation of avocado on toast (which our friend Loz calls “The Breakfast of Champions”).

When you add a bit of black salt to mashed avocado it ends up tasting weirdly similar to scrambled eggs.  We got some lovely ciabatta from the local bakery, and topped it with some mashed avocado (sprinkled with black salt and black pepper) and some vegusto fake meat stuff. Scrumptious!

Remember to check out our exciting crumble competition!  Follow us on twitter and facebook, and subscribe to our events mailing list. Fancy submitting a guest post? We would be eternally grateful!

This gorgeous recipe was sent in by Soph from Raw Nibbles. Raw Nibbles make fantastic raw goodies, chocolates, cakes, breads, and pizzas which they can send you in the post! Awesome. Make sure you check out their shop. Thanks for the guest post, Soph!

Ingredients: 

Pasta:  250g courgette (peeled)

Tomato Sauce: 6 salad tomatoes,  50g sundried tomatoes,  25g dates,  15ml lemon juice,  1 clove garlic, ½ tbsp. oregano,  ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp onion powder

Mushroom Mince: 250g mushrooms,  15ml tamari soy sauce

Tomato Layer:  3 sliced tomatoes

Pesto Layer (you can cheat and buy vegan pesto if you prefer):  105g pumpkin seeds,  60g fresh basil,  90ml olive oil, 15ml lemon juice, 1 ½ tbsp nutritional yeast,  1 clove garlic, ½ tsp pink crystal salt (or normal salt if you don’t have it)

Garnish: a few olives, parsley

Method: 

To make the pasta : Finely slice the courgette lengthways using a peeler.
To make the tomato sauce: Add all of the ingredients to your blender and blend until smooth. Tip out into a jug.
To make the muhroom mince:  Add the mushrooms to your food processor and pulse into small mince-like pieces. Add to a jug and stir in the tamari soy sauce.
To make the pesto: Add all of the ingredients to your blender and process into a chunky paste. You may wish to add a little water to it to make it more spreadable for the lasagne.

Putting it together: 

Place strips of courgette into the bottom of a dish or plate to create a pasta layer. Top with a layer of tomato sauce and a layer of mushroom mince.

Add another layer of courgette, followed by pesto and sliced tomato.

Add another layer of courgette, tomato sauce and mushroom mince.

Add another layer of courgette and some pesto.

Add another layer of courgette and some tomato sauce.

Add a final layer of courgette. Dice the remaining tomato, slice the olives and add to the top with a sprinkle of parsley.

Serve with a few dressed leaves. (This is kale, with a dressing of mustard, balsamic vinegar and xylitol crystals.)

Serve naked.

Remember to check out our exciting crumble competition!  Follow us on twitter and facebook, and subscribe to our events mailing list. Fancy submitting a guest post? We would be eternally grateful!

This is a guest post by the lovely Nicky who blogs over at Nicky’s World. Thanks for sharing 

As an intersex person, body acceptance is one of the most difficult things an intersex person has to do. It’s hard for some intersex people to accept their body because medicine and society try their hardest to hide and erase intersex people. Intersex people like myself have come to terms with our bodies and even accepted our intersex body for what it is. As an Intersex person who is also a nudist, I have come to terms with my intersex body and because of nudism, I have accepted my intersex body for what it is.

About myself, I was born with an intersex condition called Kallmann’s syndrome.  I was born with ambiguous genitals, some breast growth and a micropenis. At birth my folks called me Nilavong, a Thai girls name. When I came to America, I was given a gender-neutral name – Nick or sometimes Nicky. As for my medical condition, most of my doctors see me as having a biological indeterminate sex and don’t see me as either a man or a woman. For myself, I don’t see myself as a man or a woman and that’s because I was never born as a man or a woman. So I never developed as a “normal”  man or a woman.

I have been a nudist since my teenage years. I learned about nudism, when a friend of mine in high school took me out skinny dipping at a local lake. It was at that time I learned about the different body types and learned not to be ashamed of my naked body type including my own intersex body. Through nudism, I learned to accept my body for what it is, and learned to love my body for what it is. Even all the flaws and imperfections!

As an intersex person and a nudist, I am one of those in the intersex community who accepted their body for what it is and is very comfortable with the skin I am in. Most intersex people are scared of their bodies and forced to hide it by the medical community and society. For me, I am not ashamed of my intersex body. I’m happy with all the flaws and imperfections it has. Being a Nudist helps me accept my body for what it is and even taught me to accept my flaws and imperfections – it has made me feel comfortable with the skin I am in. Being a Nudist helped me deal with being born intersex and I don’t have to be pressured into being male or female.  It lets me be myself and who I am regardless of my intersex condition or who I am.

Definitions and Further Reading:

According to the Survivors Project:

“Intersex” is the word that describes those of us who, without voluntary medical interventions, possess bodies that doctors can’t neatly classify as male or female. This includes people who have chromosomal sex other than XX (female) or XY (male), or primary or secondary sex characteristics that defy the medical definitions of male and female. Somehow, doctors get freaked out when a newborn baby is found to be intersexed, and often mutilate their genitals to conform them to the doctors’ idea of what a normal baby should look like, even though intersex conditions usually do not threaten the health of the infant. Parents are often not given enough information or support to make an informed decision regarding their babies’ care.”

A guide for intersex allies and interested parties: http://www.intersexinitiative.org/publications/pdf/intersex-activism2.pdf

UK Intersex Association: http://www.ukia.co.uk/

Intersex UK: http://intersexuk.org/

Intersex Society of North America: http://www.isna.org/

Advocates for Informed Choice (US based group): http://aiclegal.org/

Remember to check out our exciting crumble competition!  Follow us on twitter and facebook, and subscribe to our events mailing list. Fancy submitting a guest post? We would be eternally grateful!

“Self-love isn’t saying, “I love how I look in the morning”. Self-love is saying, “This is how I look in the morning”, because basing our kicks on how we look in the morning can reduce us to our bodies. If we can love our appearance in the mirror, that’s fine, there are no problems with that. But Self-love is unconditional. It’s not based on liking what we see.” – radtransfem

Greta has started getting the occasional veg box delivered, which is great because every so often we get a vegetable through the post that we have never heard of before. Cue the arrival of this weird root vegetable called black salsify:

A quick google search for salsify recipes came up with surprisingly little, so we decided to ad lib a bit. It tastes a bit like celeriac or a less-sweet parsnip.

Ingredients for six starters: 2 black salsify roots, lemon juice, 4 cloves garlic, half a handful of fresh thyme, 1 onion (sliced into half circles), vegan marg, 1 tbsp sugar, stock powder, loaf of crusty bread from the bakery.

Salsify is a bit of weird vegetable to cook. It discolours really easily so you have to keep it in acidified water (add lemon juice or vinegar) once it has been cut into. It can be a bit weird to peel as well – much easier once it is cooked. We washed the salsify and chopped it into chunks about an inch and a half long, adding them straight into acidified water on the hob. We then boiled the salsify until tender (the time varies massively depending on how thick the root is), and plunged them into cold water once cooked. We then peeled the salsify with a knife and chopped it into small pieces.

Meanwhile, we put the butter and onions in a pan to sweat down with the sugar, some salt and pepper and a bit of stock powder. As the onions started to carmelise, we added the thyme and salsify until the salsify looked pleasantly browned.

We then sliced the bread and dotted with a bit of vegan marg to toast under the grill. Then turned them over, piled the salsify mixture on top and grilled for another minute or so. Enjoy!

Remember to check out our exciting crumble competition!  Follow us on twitter and facebook, and subscribe to our events mailing list. Fancy submitting a guest post? We would be eternally grateful!

From tumblr:

“Q: Why is ‘it’s nearly impossible to gain weight if you’re naturally thin’ a commonly accepted fact, while ‘it’s nearly impossible to lose weight if you’re naturally fat’ is an ~excuse~?

A: Because beauty standards have become a moral issue masquerading as a health concern.”

This post is just a quickie. The idea for this recipe came from my 3 year old niece, who always has yoghurt mixed into her rice whenever she has a curry for the extra cooling effect.

We cooked some basmati rice the normal way (wash the rice first, use 2 cups water to 1 cup rice, bring to the boil, cover, and simmer until the rice is steamed soft) with some added dill seeds and a dash of salt. After the rice is cooked, we added toasted dill seed, spinach cut into strips, toasted hazelnuts, a big pot of vegan yoghurt, pepper and salt to season, and cherry tomatoes to garnish. Lovely.

Remember to check out our exciting crumble competition!  Follow us on twitter and facebook, and subscribe to our events mailing list. Fancy submitting a guest post? We would be eternally grateful!

“It is as though it is a crime for a woman to be undressed in public, unless she was undressed in the service of a corporation or a commercial entrepreneur” – R Grueneich

This is another recipe from our lovely neighbour Frank. We were a bit crap with getting things posted over Christmas (you know how it is) but today is officially the 12th day of Christmas so our last chance to post something vaguely festive. Thanks to Frank for the amazing recipe. He makes the cutest food!

Remember to check out our exciting crumble competition! 

Makes: 20 biscuits, Prep time: 15 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients: 110g vegan marg, 175g plain flour, 65g caster sugar, icing sugar for dusting

To make the festive shortbread, I preheated the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4, and greased the baking tray.

Next, I rubbed the marg into the flour until it looked like breadcrumbs, then stirred in the sugar. I then gently kneaded the mixture into a smooth dough, and rolled it out on a floured surface.

I used snowman and reindeer cookie cutters to cut shapes into the dough, and placed them onto the baking tray. I cooked the biscuits for around 25 minutes, turning them occasionally.

Once cooked and cooled, I coated the snowmen in icing sugar. I used raisins to create eyes, mouths, and coat buttons for the snowmen, cherry halves for their scarves, and tiny pieces of carrot for their noses. I used dried cranberries for the reindeer noses, and walnuts for their antlers.

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Crumbles are probably one of our favourite comfort foods. And with the cold winter nights and Spring seeming so far away, now is the best time to indulge!

We have decided to run a bit of a competition to see who can come up with the best crumble recipe.

The winner will get their crumble recipe featured in the upcoming cookbook and 2 free copies of the cookbook once it is published!

The rules: 

1. The crumble must be a sweet crumble

2. You should send us:

• The crumble recipe
• A close up picture of the crumble
• A picture of you with the crumble (no, you dont have to be naked)

3. The crumble should be vegan

4. You should send your entries to us at nakedvegancooking[at]gmail.com before the 1st of February 2013

Get baking!

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Happy New Year!

This recipe has come from our lovely friend Joop in the Netherlands who cooked it for a naked dinner party. Yum!

Ingredients: 1 ½ litre water, 1 tsp stock powder,  1 tsp dried basil, 1 tsp dried thyme, 1 medium sized celeriac (diced), 1 small carrot (in coins), 2 onions (diced small), 2 potatoes (diced), 1 tomato, 1 spring onion, 1 apple (diced), ½ lemon, crushed garlic, 2 bay leaves, 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp nutmeg, handful fresh celery leaf or 1 tsp celery salt, 250ml soya cream, olive oil, pieces of walnuts, fresh parsley (to garnish)

Put the water to boil and mix it with the stock and bay leaves. As soon as the stock is boiling, add the celeriac, the carrot,  potatoes and the apple. Leave to simmer.

Put some olive oil in a frying-pan and fry  the diced onions, garlic, tomato and the spring onion until the onions are clear.

When the diced veg are soft, add the onion mixture and soy cream and blend until smooth. Adjust the seasoning to taste and re-heat to serve. Meanwhile, grill the walnuts until browned (not too long!) for a garnish.

Bon appetit!

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